1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a label preparation device which can edit the print content of each of a plurality of labels and prepares a plurality of labels on the basis of the editing result of the print content of each label.
2. Related Art
According to the related art, as a label preparation device (tape printing device), a device including: a keyboard having various input keys; a display screen which display an editing result (document) based on input information inputted via the keyboard, and a preview image (print preview) based on the editing result; a print unit which executes printing on a print tape on the basis of the editing result; and a cutting unit which cuts the printed part of the print tape, is known (see JP-A-2013-58041). In this tape printing device, the printing unit performs printing on the print tape and subsequently the cutting unit cuts the printed part, thus preparing a strip-like label.
Meanwhile, there is a demand for collective preparation of a plurality of labels with different print contents in the label preparation device of this type. That is, in the case of preparing a plurality of labels with different print contents by an existing method, editing of the print content and label preparation processing based on the editing result (print processing and cutting processing) are to be carried out for each label, which makes the label preparation work very complex. Therefore, there is a demand for collective editing of the print contents of a plurality of labels and collective implementation of label preparation processing based on each editing result.
To address this, it is conceivable that the print content of each of a plurality of labels is displayed in a text format in an editable manner and then the plurality of labels is prepared on the basis of the editing result of the print content of each label. However, with such a configuration, since the print content is displayed in a text format, the user has no other choice than to edit the print content, imagining the label to be prepared as a result. This poses the problem that it is difficult to prepare a desired label. Thus, it is proposed that a preview image of each of a plurality of labels should be displayed. However, such a configuration has the problems that the generation processing for a plurality of preview images strains the memory capacity in the label preparation device and that the display screen needs to be increased as not all the preview images can be displayed on the existing display screen.
To cope with these problems, the present inventors have thought of displaying only the preview image of the label currently being edited (editing target) while omitting the display of the preview images of the other labels. However, with a configuration in which only the preview image of the label currently being edited is simply displayed, what number the label currently being edited with a preview image being displayed is, or whether there is any label preceding or following the label in question in the order, cannot be intuitively grasped. This poses the problem that the editing work on each label cannot be carried out smoothly.